I first heard Rosalie Bertell speak in 1986. Roger, a customer and friend of mine, had met her when he’d hired the Institute to implement a health study for the employees of his factory. Now, he’d invited her to speak at his church and, from our many conversations on industry and the environment, he thought I would be interested.
Rosalie exuded a quiet authority. She spoke gently, connecting the dots in plain language for a non-technical crowd. Her focus that day was on the insidious health effects of low-level radiation. After explaining concisely how radiation from ingested particles disrupts the living cell systems, causing ill-health, she said something like the following, which will stay with me forever:
“Let us imagine there is a runaway accident at a nuclear facility. There might be a number of instant and protracted deaths, acute illness, and the surrounding environment would be damaged for time immemorial. Or, let us imagine there is a nuclear conflict between those that have the Bomb. Again, many instant deaths would be followed by more deaths, serious health problems, and a charred planet. Both these scenarios would be catastrophic; and both are somehow familiar, from history (Hiroshima, Three Mile Island), and from fiction. We understand these scenarios and, as a civilization, we barter with their risks. One can imagine that if we were badly affected, we might decide that the risks of pursuing this technology outweigh the benefits, and we might choose to stop building such dangerous machines. However, let us imagine yet another scenario, one where there is routine leaking of radioactive materials into the environment, across the uranium life cycle, from mining to power generation to preparation for war. Living organisms ingest the pollutants, undergo detrimental, yet unspectacular mutations, and survive to reproduce. The next generation, born with a weaker immune system, living in a more caustic environment, would mutate further, and reproduce. Life finds ways to keep reproducing; thus we would facilitate the tapering of our viability, oblivious of its silent causes.“
When I later read the book Rosalie had just published, No Immediate Danger, I realized she’d given this phenomenon a name:omnicide, a death spiral. What struck me is how this scenario was worse than the previous ones because it had already happened, was happening EVERY DAY, without fanfare, under our radars. My immune system is very likely weaker than my parents’, my children’s weaker than mine. Once fully grasped, the idea has a paralyzing effect:We’re turning back the clock on our planet’s viability, we’re eroding our immune resilience, and this silent catastrophe is largely unacknowledged!
Still, I decided to face these facts as unflinchingly as possible and got involved with the Institute.
Watching Rosalie in action over the years, I’ve come to understand that the effectiveness of the Institute in seeking to protect our human right to health rests with a couple of simple ideas:
- If we value life over technology, the cautionary principle ought to trump our thirst for technological heroism – we must protect the seed, the beginning of organic life, against regressive transformation, lest there is no future.
- In order to stay effective in handling the many objections from industry and the military, the Institute must remain plainly scientific; not sentimental, not political, not militant. We are educators and researchers dealing strictly in measurable facts.
Although the facts are painful – war causes the most pollution and the children are the most vulnerable – our unimpeachable objectivity gives us authority. Without it, those we challenge can dismiss us. With it, we are few, but we are unstoppable. As we welcome people to join in our work, I make it my duty to give them this “speech”.